Fictive Kinship and Deep Structures

One of the coolest things I learned in New Testament 1 last fall was the concept of structuralism, which says that all stories can be mapped onto a handful of deep structures, basic storylines that have existed pretty much since stories have been told. For example, Tolstoy said, "All great literature is one of two stories: a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town." That is a structuralist thing to say.

Fast forward a few months. I'm thinking about my final paper for Introduction to Christian Ethics. We can do pretty much whatever we want as long as we clear it with the professor. I think I want to write a paper about The Witch of Blackbird Pond. This book was one that affected me the most as a child, one of the first to make me feel real rage at the injustice of how the characters were treated. It came up twice in conversation within a week recently, so I decided to re-read it for the first time in a couple decades. Reading it as an adult is revealing. I realize part of why it upset me when I was younger. The book is about a young woman who doesn't fit in, who doesn't know how to fit in. She's from Barbados and lives in Puritan New England. She doesn't know the codes, she keeps breaking rules without meaning to, being more and more rejected by the people around her. This more than rings a bell. I didn't experience anything truly hateful or harmful when I was young (or since), but I never felt like I fit in, and sometimes I had no idea how to try.

I start thinking of other ideas for my paper in case the professor doesn't go for it. After all, some academics don't believe in the power of chapter books. So I come up with the movie Saved! and the movie-and-book Chocolat. Only after weeks of pondering does it occur to me that these are basically three versions of the same story: a woman doesn't fit in (orphan, stranger, pregnant teenager). Her locale is pretty strict and doesn't allow for a lot of easy fitting in (Puritan New England, close-knit small town, conservative Christian school). She struggles and hurts, but she finds a few other outsiders who help remind her of some important truths. Life isn't about fitting in. She becomes more comfortable with herself, due in large part to this new subgroup.

Fictive kinship is another concept from Bible classes, I think from Old Testament. It's basically what it sounds like: kinship, as in people who belong to each other. Fictive, as in not by blood or on paper. So I've called this deep structure the Fictive Kinship narrative.

Around the same time, I went to a conference and one of the presentations was about positive deviance. Everyone lives on the bell curve somewhere, with the majority of folks in the middle, just going along living their lives. One one end, you have negative deviance. People who don't fit in because they commit crimes or lack some abilities or don't relate well to others. Anyone whom a dystopian society would kick out. But then there's the other end. Also people who don't fit in, but it's because they are more creative, more thoughtful, more innovative and forward-thinking, perhaps more selfless and generous than is typical. These people might also be kicked out by a dystopian society, or at least silenced at times. The conference was about church, so in that context the presenters said we ought to seek out positive deviance in our communities and congregations, acknowledge it and applaud it, listen to the people and let them lead us. They also said everyone is positively deviant at some times, it's not like an elite subset of geniuses only. The protagonists in my cherished stories are positive deviants, thinking differently, feeling silenced or shunned for it, often trying to downplay the difference until something happens to make them feel more free.

I became a little obsessed with this deep structure, this positive deviance. Once I noticed it, I found it everywhere. Not every story fit so neatly, but the basics were there in almost all my favorites: Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, the book of Ruth, Jesus and his friends, the early church, The Hunger Games, The Giver and its follow-ups. Mary Poppins and Office Space to some extent. Obviously there's something there for me, something these stories have to tell me. Many of them already have, but the meaning of a story is not easily exhausted. I have some ideas, none of them very developed:

-A pastor is typically someone who is slightly outside the culture and society she lives in, whose outsider status gives her special insight into that culture.
-I'm about to go and be a pastor (most likely, inshallah), in a place where I will certainly be a stranger for a while just by being new.
-We don't need to be surrounded by people who are just like us, and we don't need to be just like the people who surround us. But we do usually need a few, just a few, individuals who appreciate us and whom we appreciate the way they are. This fictive kinship is an important part of survival for anyone, especially those who do find themselves on the margins in some way.
-These stories are extremely popular. If a story about someone who doesn't fit in has so much success, doesn't that mean that a lot of people identify with it? A lot of people feel like they don't fit in either? I have a hunch that we all feel that way sometimes, that the few people who don't (or wouldn't ever acknowledge it) are the few with the most power. Maybe it's time to stop pretending we all fit in.

That's what I have at the moment, and I would love to hear your thoughts. Can you think of other stories with this structure or something like it? Does this resonate with you?

Lenten community blog

Hey, this is just a link to a post I wrote on another blog, the one my seminary is doing for Lent.

http://upsemlentenblog.wordpress.com/2014/03/16/genesis-121-4/

Enjoy!

Nuns Wearing Tutus

Not really, I just thought that might get your attention. I've been thinking about "the nones." Sometime in the last couple years, polls started showing an increase in people who marked "none" under religion. Here's a pretty good rundown of it. People who mark other things under religion flipped and freaked. OMG! SOME PEOPLE AREN'T CHRISTIAN! SOME PEOPLE AREN'T EVEN RELIGIOUS! HOW CAN THIS BE AND WHAT ARE WE TO DO?!

I don't mean to make fun of people who are concerned about this information, but I am a little confused about why it came as such a huge shock to Christians and other religious people. The nones went up from about 15 to about 20 percent over 6 years. I don't see that as an alarming spike, just an indicator of a natural movement, though maybe that does count as alarming. Among young people, it was more like 30%. That actually seems low to me. So I am concerned as well, not that there are so many nones, but that the church people didn't realize it. Who have they been hanging out with? Are church people spending so much time with other church people that they seriously didn't know a minority of people do not consider themselves religious?

The next question, of course, is why and what now. The why seems somewhat easy to me too, which brings us to the tutu part. I read a quote from Desmond Tutu a few weeks ago, and I've been turning it over in my head ever since. He's talking about the experience of Africans being visited by Christian missionaries, with "he" being African people in a collective sense.

    "...he was being redeemed from sins he did not believe he had committed; he was being given answers, and often quite splendid answers, to questions he had not asked."
     That describes a lot of people's experience. You definitely don't have to be African to feel like certain expressions of religion are irrelevant, just meaningless to your life. Even I have felt that way sometimes, and I'm in ministry! I had never quite thought of it the way he put it: answering questions that aren't being asked. I wager that's at the root of what many of those unaffiliated people would say. They're into serving their communities, donating time and money, and often meditating or discussing sacred texts. They feel like they can do those things without church, and they're absolutely right. They can. They are getting the answers to some of their questions in these places. How can I connect meaningfully with other people? How can I enrich my own and others' experience of life? How can I slow down and find peace? The churches that thrive and draw these people are the ones that pay attention and offer responses to these questions. The churches that are "dying"? Those are the ones whose answers don't line up with people's real questions. Heaven and hell, right and wrong, who's in and who's out...in my experience, people don't worry too much about these things, at least not as much as living a rewarding, compassionate life.

I'm not saying the church should abandon its agenda and start playing to the crowds. I'm saying the church's interests are really quite well-aligned with most people's interests: relationships, wholeness, sustainability, big questions about selflessness and sacrifice and what love looks like in any given moment. Those binary questions like right and wrong, if they come up at all, can easily be addressed within these compelling frameworks. And it's not a hide-the-pill-in-the-peanut-butter thing either, like we're giving people something attractive in order to slip in something difficult. No, it's more like when I was teaching Creative Writing to college students. I knew I wanted to teach David Sedaris (fangirl moment OMG he's the best!). My first semester, I chose the shortest essay in the one book of his I had at the time, Me Talk Pretty One Day. I chose it only for its length, thinking anything by him would get the job done and of course students like to read fewer pages.

Me Talk Pretty One Day is divided into two parts, one about growing up in North Carolina and one about living in France. This essay came from the France part, and I thought it was hilarious because I had majored in French. The humor had to do mostly with the language. It didn't occur to me that other people might not be as amused as me, but the students, of course, just found it strange.

The following semester, I taught another essay from the same book, from the North Carolina part, chosen on advice from more-experienced TA's. The students loved the essay. Every semester, they loved it. No one ever said it wasn't funny or wasn't good. It was longer by a few pages, but they were more than willing to go there. It also had a lot of cusses, which didn't hurt.

What I mean is, sometimes a certain thing makes sense on paper. It's shorter, seems easier, in some situations it's just right. I can't tell you how much I loved that first essay. And we might think people want easy teachings about what's right and wrong, what to do and not to do. But context is everything. If there's no point of contact in someone's reality, if they don't know the language, forget it.

This college where I taught was in North Carolina. Most of the students were from North Carolina. The second essay took place in North Carolina and had to do with some cultural things about North Carolina. That was available to me the whole time, but because I assumed they wanted something shorter, I first chose the essay that was rather alien to most of them. That was a mistake in several ways. If the topics arise from what is already on their minds, if they are drawn in by what they recognize, the difficulty level is not a problem. People will do so much more work when it matters to them. They will read the extra pages, they will take all the time necessary, they will pay attention, because they are being taken into account and addressed directly. Someone has been listening to them, and they notice that feeling. In that state, people are more than willing to do the difficult work of exploring non-binary, ambiguous questions.

It was really hard for me to hear that my students didn't like the first essay. It was hard to let go of teaching it. I cared about it, and I wanted so badly for everyone else to care too. But you know what? I couldn't tell you a thing about it now. The second one, though, I know intimately, years later. If you and I are ever at a cocktail party, don't bring it up unless you want me to corner you all night talking about this essay. Every time I think about it, I remember my students and the time we spent together. I am so glad I paid attention to what they cared about, because it turns out I care about it too. When I set aside the first essay and picked up the second, I lost nothing but my pride. If I had insisted that we keep reading the first one just because it was meaningful to me, I wouldn't have been a very good teacher. When we insist on doing church a certain way just because it is meaningful to us, without a thought for people who might be interested if we made some changes, we are not being very good friends or neighbors.

And here's some profoundly good news for those of us who feel a sense of loss when we let go of our preferences. Some of my students have almost certainly picked up the book and read the first essay along with all the others. They probably liked it, even though it wasn't appealing as an introduction to Sedaris. Because the second essay worked for them, they were interested in reading more. When we offer compelling introductions, people pick up from there and eagerly pursue the topic with an excitement that surprises everyone. Those texts that once seemed irrelevant and distant become the site of fruitful discussion and lush growth. The church traditions that come off as dated might be renewed and enlivened with the right interpretation. No essay is too hard to read, no question too hard to ask. It just requires the right introduction, the questions lining up. Answers not guaranteed. 

Up and Down the Mountain: Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday, March 2, 2014

Our New Testament reading is Matthew 17:1-9. Listen for what God is telling you.

Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. ² And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. ³ Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. ⁴ Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” ⁵ While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” ⁶ When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. ⁷ But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” ⁸ And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.⁹ As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.” 

This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

Once upon a time, I climbed a mountain. It was a nice day, not too hot or too cold. Light-sweatshirt weather. I had several water bottles in my backpack, a good pair of worn-in shoes, and two friends going with me. We worked together in that national park.

I’ve never been a very fast-moving person, so I fell behind the others periodically. That was normal for me and not distressing. I might lose sight of them for a moment, but as I came up to a clearer spot, they would come into view again. Sometimes I’d catch up and we’d walk and talk for a while. There wasn’t much of a path, just a general idea of the direction of the peak.

            

This mountain had a series of basically very large stairsteps. Taller than a person in places. When we got to those, it was much harder to keep my friends in sight because these ledges blocked my view. But eventually I would spot them. Until I didn’t. One stair-step too far between us, or maybe one too many water breaks on my part, and I didn’t know where they were. Which meant I didn’t know where I was, in a way. I had been following them, if somewhat windingly, and when you’re not following someone things can change pretty quickly from a fun little hike to a disorienting and potentially upsetting experience. I tried to figure out how far up I was, which is really hard when you’re on the mountain. I picked up my pace hoping to catch up, but with increasingly uneven terrain I knew there were too many rocks and rises blocking my view. I decided to go on—I knew which way was up, after all, and I didn’t know of any clear and present dangers on that mountain. I might never have the chance to get to the peak again. So, periodically yelling for my friends and to keep bears away, I went slowly up and up. The soil was gravelly and loose, so I slipped a few times. Once I grabbed a small tree to pull myself up and it moved with me! The closer I got to the top, the less willing I was to turn around.

           

I got there eventually. I took some pictures, I think. Drank some water. Rested for a bit before heading back down. It was pretty cool, I could see a lot, a couple smaller rises and trails I had been on before, the hotel where I worked and the building I lived in, the one road out of the park. But, as interesting and different as it was, I never would have wanted to stay. The mountaintop is a lonely place; there’s not much to do except look around.

In the time and place where the Bible was written, mountains were considered a literal bridge between heaven and earth, which meant a way to get direct access to the gods. People went there for mystical experiences and rites of passage. You’ve probably heard of Mount Olympus, where all the Greek gods like Zeus and Hera lived. If they came down, it was atypical and noteworthy. Divine folks did not deign to mix with the lowly mortals unless there was a reason.

            

So it makes some sense that mountaintops figure prominently in our two stories today, with Moses and Jesus. That was how the readers’ worldview thought of divine encounters. But in both cases, something is so different from Zeus and Hera and their friends and foes. Namely, God is saying in both cases, “I don’t want to stay here. This mountaintop is a lonely place. There’s not much to do except look around.” God is saying, “I would rather be with people. This mountain is not for me.”

            

In the Moses story, God has been communicating with the people of Israel mostly through him, through Moses. But now God writes down the ten commandments, which begins the process of, in a sense, cutting out the middle-man. With this law, God’s people can begin to handle their own relationship with God. It’s still in a somewhat limited sense, but later God will put the law in their hearts, and then God will send Jesus, and then…well, then Jesus will go up on another mountain.

            

Peter, John, and James are with him. They’re not prepared at all for what happens up there. No one would be, really. So when Peter makes a somewhat bizarre statement, surely part of it is just the awkwardness of not knowing what to say. “It is good for us to be here! We should set up some sort of structure!” Maybe he also wanted something to do with his hands. At any rate, Moses and Elijah had appeared, Jesus was all lit up, so they were already pretty flustered when something even more crazy happened—a voice from heaven! “This is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” It makes you want to pay extra attention to the next thing Jesus says, doesn’t it? So what are his next words? “Get up, and do not be afraid.” He says this while touching Peter’s shoulder. So this God, this mountaintop God who likes to dress up as a cloud or fire or blinding light, who speaks from heaven and makes people quake with fear—this same God is the one who touches us with a human hand and reminds us we don’t have to be afraid. It’s the same God who dwells with us, who is always moving to guide us. Even in cloud form in Exodus, God didn’t stay on the mountain.

            

So if this flashy mountaintop God is not the center or the extent of who God is, why do it? Why put on the show? Maybe God just thinks it’s fun to freak us out sometimes. But probably it’s something more than that. I think God gives us dazzling moments where God’s presence is obvious in order to sustain us through the times we can’t be sure. This is going on in both stories. In Exodus, several chapters before and after this scene are the type that some people skip over. I don’t know who those people might be, but I hear it happens sometimes. Before Moses goes up the mountain, it’s legal minutiae about how the community should be run, how the people of God should live and work together. Afterward, it’s detailed building instructions for the temple! So detailed! Down to the type of wood to use and the measurements of the curtains. And in between, in the middle of all that mundane material, we have this transfigurative experience. Isn’t that how it goes? Doesn’t God usually catch us off guard when we think life is just utterly normal? It’s less about topography and more about divine moments amid the mundane ones.

And, in Matthew, the worse than mundane. Immediately before this scene, Jesus asked what people were saying about him, which led to Peter’s confession that he is the Messiah, which led to Jesus telling them that he was going to suffer and die. Maybe they went on the hike just to be distracted and to get away from the other guys’ gloomy reactions. Anything to get their minds off such terrible news. That’s not what you want to hear about your leader or anyone you love. It doesn’t make sense! And after the transfiguration, right on the way back down the mountain, they encounter a man and his son, who is possessed by demons. The father says, “He often falls into the fire and often into the water.” So this boy is burned, maybe even disfigured. Worse than mundane. Not long after that, the momentum starts to build more quickly for Jesus’ crucifixion. There’s no turning back and no denying that he meant it and knew what he was talking about when he said he would “undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” And in between, in the middle of all that anxious, fearful, sad, unsettling material that doesn’t make sense, we have this transfigurative experience. Isn’t that how it goes? Doesn’t God usually find us when we need God most? Not always, from our perspective. Sometimes we just don’t feel God’s presence even when that’s what we most want. But sometimes, these mountaintop moments happen in the lowlands, the wadis, at sea level, in the Marianas Trench, the deepest part of the ocean. It’s not about topography. It’s about God being utterly obvious—flashy, loud, unmistakable—at times we don’t choose or understand. Times when God is preparing us for endurance through mundane boring ol’ life. Or when we have just gotten bad news, like the apostles, and are about to see it unfold while we can do nothing. God knows when we really need a transfiguration.

Regardless of where those needs align in our lives, liturgically, we’re in the situation of Peter, James, and John. The season of Lent starts on Wednesday. We’re standing on a great big peak, looking down on the time that we set aside to remember the really terrible, hurtful things about Jesus’ death. Things that almost everyone struggles to accept, understand, or even believe. We’re supposed to leave this high place and go down there. Here is the good news on this particular day, which may be the best news of all. God has already left the mountain. Oh, God is with us up here, most certainly, but God also knows the depths of every valley. God lives there, in the lowlands, where the light does not touch. God went first, so it is safe for us. When we look out at everything Lent means for us and crumple to the rocky ground, God reaches out to us with human hands and says, “Get up. Don’t be afraid.” 

An Open Letter

Dear ten-year-old girl who said before praying, "It's not going to be good. I don't know how to do it":
Dear high-schoolers who are intellectual and introspective in a town of people who are just trying to get by:
Dear women who act ditzy when you are smarter than most people around you:

I am sorry that when I was in third grade I said my favorite school subjects were P.E. and lunch when in fact I loved reading and social studies and science. I knew already that it wasn't cool to be smart or even to be interested in school. Because I didn't own it, you're having a harder time knowing how powerful and intelligent and worthy you are. And you are. It's OK if you like P.E. and lunch. It's OK if you like reading and social studies and science. It's OK if you like history. It's OK if you like your teachers. It's OK if you like school. It's OK if you don't.

I am sorry for the time in high school when, giving an example about spending money, I said, "Like if you buy a book--I mean, not that I would buy a book--a CD or something...." When in fact I loved books so much, and still do. I betrayed myself and you, I betrayed all of us. I reached through the years and put out my hand to hold you down. We all did. We all do.

I am sorry for not wearing my patchwork hippie shirt for about five years in high school and college because it made me stand out too much. I was complicit in creating a culture where people are not rewarded for standing out, no matter how much it is spoken of as a good thing. I was playing the game of fitting in. Please know: it's so overrated. The rules keep changing and nothing but luck can win it. That shirt got so many compliments when I brought it out of hiding. Fitting in is fine if what you want happens to be what many others want, but it can happen by coincidence, as a result of other choices, not as a reason for them.

This is not a letter about guilt. Feeling sorry doesn't always mean feeling guilty. I was acting based on what I understood and wanted at those times. I don't want anyone else to feel guilty about what they have chosen in the past, especially when they were very young. No, this is a letter about freedom. A letter about light. Awareness. Recognition. Support, strength, empowerment. This is a letter about learning from the way my life is shaped by others, trying to push back gently and encourage others to do the same. Here we are, simmering in our individual pots of shame and fear. Let's remember we're all here, and everyone is so different with different reasons for different choices, but we can start by peeking over the top of the pot to see who else is simmering nearby. Then we can pull ourselves up--a huge effort, not for the faint of heart, but luckily none of us are faint of heart. Then we can sit on the sides of the pots and talk, cooling ourselves in the air. When one person falls in, the others can reach out and pull them, or jump in and buoy them. But no one has to keep simmering forever. I invite you to start getting ready for the climb out. The water makes it harder because it offers resistance, but that means you will build muscle so much more quickly.

Love,
Rachel

The Greater Good

This post contains spoilers about the movie Hot Fuzz.

I have had a post rolling around in my head for a long time. I watched the movie Hot Fuzz a few months ago, and especially at the beginning, I found myself thinking of the book A Church of Her Own. The movie is a hilarious spoof of the cop genre, done by some of the same folks as Shaun of the Dead. It begins by establishing that the main character is great at his job as a policeman in London, but it turns out he is too good. He's making the rest of them look bad! So the higher-ups ship him off to a tiny, sleepy town in the country. He learns that the crime rate is extremely low, though the accident rate is curiously high. Eventually, he discovers that the neighborhood watch has been killing people who make the town look bad, mostly for absurd reasons like building an unsightly house, acting badly in community theater, or even just having an annoying laugh. These people put the town's standing as Village of the Year in jeopardy. The murders are all made to look like accidents, which is why the accident rate is so high. The refrain throughout is that everything is for "the greater good" (which is always echoed in agreement by at least one character, never said just once in this movie). At the end he is able to persuade the rest of the police officers to think differently about "the greater good" and save the day. It's great and you should watch it, preferably a bunch of times, because it gets a lot better with each viewing.

A Church of Her Own is a nonfiction work about women in ministry. It is full of discouraging, disheartening anecdotes about senior pastors (men and women) belittling, ignoring, or undermining female associate pastors, as well as congregations and communities that don't know what to do with a pastor who's a woman. Story after story made me hang my head. People were fixated on women pastors' appearance and clothing, commenting on that instead of the sermon--even if she was wearing a robe or alb, people often talked about her shoes, nail polish, hair, or jewelry! If I needed any confirmation that women are often seen as objects to be beheld, not people with something to say, this book provided it. It ends on an uplifting note, with a few stories of exciting work women are doing in ministry. I recommend it to anyone who has a vested interest in churches.

Here's what made me think of the book while I watched the movie: the main character was treated a lot like the women in the book. Not objectified, but often ignored or waved away as a naive newcomer or an overachiever who was not appreciated for pointing out what others had missed. As I said, it's been months, and specific examples aren't coming to me, but this is a blog, not a dissertation. One day I'll go back and read the book and watch the movie and bring in some quotes. The idea is that he disrupted the status quo by trying to do the right thing, like looking into accidents that seemed suspicious. What he was doing, what lots of ministers of any gender do, is for the greater good. There's nothing inherently wrong with comfort, routine, the way we've always done it. But when someone comes along who doesn't know the code or doesn't care to follow it, or who asks questions that unsettle us, or who wants to dig deeper when we prefer to stay on the surface, or who has a different perspective, let's listen to them. Let's not dismiss them as not knowing anything because they're not like us. Let's not pat them on the head and tell them not to worry. Let's take them seriously. Let's welcome them into our lives and communities with genuine care and curiosity about who they are and what they are about. Let's not be like the village or like some of the churches and individuals in the book. Let's take a chance and turn our faces outward from time to time. For the greater good.